When soft tissue tears away from bone, reattachment becomes necessary. Various traditional devices, including sutures, screws, staples, wedges, anchors, and plugs, have been used to secure soft tissue to bone. In ball-and-socket joints, such as the shoulder or hip, reattachment is often necessary due to the high stress and movement demanded of the ball-and-socket bone structures. Often, such procedures involve surgical reattachment of labral tissue. The labral tissue, or labrum, is a type of soft tissue or cartilage that surrounds the socket of ball-and-socket joints, such as the shoulder and the hip joint. The labrum forms a ring around the edge of the bony socket of the joint, and helps to provide stability to the joint, yet unlike bone, it also allows flexibility and motion.
Current surgical procedures can involve the use of a knotless suture anchor for reattaching the labrum to the bone, as knotless suture anchors avoid the need to tie a knot in a constricted space, such as a ball-and-socket joint. A suture is first passed through the tissue to be reattached, and the trailing ends of the suture extending outside of the patient are then loaded onto the anchor. A drill guide is typically passed through the tissue and positioned in alignment with the anchor site, and a drill bit is passed through the drill guide to form a hole in the bone. The suture is positioned off to the side while the hole is being formed. Once the bone hole is prepared, the drill guide is removed and the anchor can be inserted into the bone hole using an inserter tool. The suture is tensioned during advancement of the anchor so as to pull the tissue toward the bone hole, thereby anchoring the tissue to the bone.
While knotless suture anchors can be very effective in reattaching soft tissue to bone, the small size of the anchor and the tight constraints of the ball-and-socket joint can make it difficult to locate the bone hole and to insert the anchor into the bone hole. In the shoulder joint, for example, the humeral head will typically return to its resting position within the socket after the drill guide is removed, obstructing the path to the hole. In the hip, for another example, visualization of the hole can be a challenge due to challenging angles and the tight nature of the joint space.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved devices, systems, and methods for knotless suture anchors.